For a business, inventory operation not only provides the function to regulate production, purchase, and sale, but is also a part of its assets. Therefore, inventory management has a major impact on the operation and profitability of a business. Especially for a company with a gradually enlarging business scale, its entered and withdrawn quantities of raw materials and objects in the warehouse also hugely increase. Consequently, the capability to improve the efficiency of material circulation and inventory plays a crucial role in the company's performance. In recent years, the rapid progress of hardware and software industries has promoted the warehouse management system (WMS) development, which has thus improved business efficiency in warehouse management. Generally speaking, the essential requirement for inventory management is to create the data file for stored objects; all of the information—such as warehouse category for stored objects, storage location in the warehouse, item number, unit, and quantity—needs to be entered in the inventory file for its utilization by related production, purchase, selling and financial systems.
The inventory file of a conventional WMS classifies objects with their attributes. The finished warehouse stores finished products; semi-finished warehouse stores semi-finished products; raw material warehouse stores raw materials and objects. Most WMSs further relate to the states of finished, semi-finished products and separate their storage location into second-grade product warehouse, newly finished warehouse, out-dated warehouse, rejected warehouse, and etc. However, a business limited to only one warehouse has to re-designate the warehouse into finished warehouse, semi-finished warehouse, and raw material warehouse for the WMS to correctly calculate and use the inventory information. As a result, the warehouse categorization for these systems to correctly calculate and use inventory information causes ineffectiveness in inventory management because of repeated transferring/allocating of objects between different warehouse categories during the production or sale processes.
FIG. 1 illustrates the related processes of object purchase, production, processing, and sale, which usually begin with purchasing 10, storing raw material in the raw material warehouse 12, creating the inventory file, and then withdrawing raw materials (based on the manufacture scale) for production/processing 14 to make semi-finished or finished products. On this point, the above-mentioned WMS designates the semi-finished and finished products to go separately into the semi-finished warehouse 16 and the finished warehouse 18 while entering the information in the inventory file. For some more thoroughly categorized WMSs, the products to go into the semi-finished warehouse are further categorized based on their states and entered into second-grade, approved, and defective warehouses; while the products for the finished warehouse are also categorized into the second-grade, approved, and defective objects. Rejected products from production error are moved into the rejected warehouse 20 for further processing.
Note that, based on the conventional WMS design, only objects stored in the finished warehouse 18 are ready for sale. Thus, when a company decides to sell the objects stored in the raw material warehouse 12 or semi-finished warehouse 16 for strategic or business reasons, the system must virtually transfer/allocate the objects into finished warehouse 18 before the selling process 22. Sometimes, for processing accurate counting during inventory management, the objects stored in raw material warehouse 12 or the objects in semi-finished warehouse 16 have to be physically moved into the finished warehouse 18 before the selling process.
FIG. 2A illustrates the storage processes of a conventional WMS, which start with the completion of purchasing and storing 30, followed by entering the information of stored raw materials 32 comprised of warehouse category, item number, location, unit, and quantity; the next step is writing the information into the inventory file 34 to complete the warehouse entry processes 36. Similarly, as FIG. 2B illustrates, while processing warehouse entry after production 40, the objects are separated with finished or semi-finished attributes 42 to be entered into finished warehouse 44 or entered into semi-finished warehouse 46. While processing warehouse storage for finished products, the information of (finished) warehouse category, item number, location, unit, and quantity is entered and written into the inventory file 48 to complete the operation 50; for semi-finished products, the related information is entered and written into the inventory file 52 to complete the warehouse entry processes 54.
FIG. 3A illustrates the warehouse withdrawal processes of a conventional WMS. Consecutive steps start with processing material withdrawal for production 60, withdrawing required objects from the raw material warehouse or semi-finished warehouse 62, pertaining to the raw material or semi-finished attributes of objects 64, deducting the withdrawn quantity from the object inventory in the raw material warehouse 66, deducting the withdrawn quantity from the object inventory in the semi-finished warehouse 68, and finishing the object withdrawal for production process 70. Similarly, FIG. 3B illustrates the consecutive processes from processing product withdrawal for sale 72, determining finished products 74, withdrawing finished objects from finished warehouse based on the order's requested quantity 76, deducting the withdrawn quantity from the finished warehouse inventory 78 and finishing the withdrawal for sale processes 80. Alternatively, the objects, not being selected as finished products 74, are transferred/allocated into raw material or semi-finished warehouse 82 by manually entering the related information 84.
With the limitation of physical inventory space, some companies are unable to create various warehouses and tend to segregate their only warehouse into several virtual warehouses. However, when there are too many types of objects stored in the same warehouse, it becomes very complicated and tedious to process counting, inventory management, and warehouse entry/withdrawal. Moreover, the stored object quantity in the warehouse is measured based on object attributes (such as finished products, semi-finished products, raw materials, rejects, and etc.), so only the book inventory quantity can be provided as reference for production, counting, and sale. As a result, the inventory quantity cannot correctly reflect the updated states of related operations such as ordered but undelivered objects, requests from clients for quotations, or what has been scheduled in the production plan.